The British Jaws, The Demon on Dartmoor, and estate agents organising a mass whinge about the utterly inconsequential home information pa.w wsddip jfws\a/;……..-sorry, just fell asleep on my keyboard* – yes, folks, it’s silly season once again, and I’m almost looking forward to this one. The imagination of our daily red-topped chav-speak lexicons will be stretched to new levels given that (a) there won’t be anyone taking their clothes off in Trafalgar Square/Hyde Park this year, (b) wasps aren’t getting any bigger or coming from anywhere else and (c) once they traditionally get bored there’s nothing left to anticipate in the Queen’s Speech because helpful old Guddenbroon has already projectile vomited it all over the front benches before the recess, and like a pack of wild puke hounds the editors bit each others’ bettys off to be able to mop it up with their rags. Even that old standby immigration will be of no use once the decent majority get their loungers out – it tends to lose its horror when one is sipping Pimm’s in a 100-ft back garden, where you know, (dear) Britain just doesn’t seem quite so crowded to overflowing, what! (though they should do something about next door’s bloody lawnmower). Incidentally, this only recently occurred to me, but as clued-up senior boloists you will probably already have appreciated the metaphorical value of the ‘influx of freak insect from the continent’ stories that crop up (just when you thought it safe to venture to Homebase the French release a cloud of mildly irritant purple moth caterpillars, and of course giant wasps, presumably bred in a detention centre in Calais or somewhere oop Congo-way).
So anyway, back to the supposed Great White shark spotted off the coast of Cornwall: a considered little piece in the true interest of public safety, keenly and conscientiously researched to make sure it wasn’t a harmless blue shark, porbeagle or basking shark (<em>oh noooowh Cap’n, this’n wuz ‘ooooge wiv teeyf loik Forrrd Fiesterrrrs), and guaranteed to deliver to the tourist industry the kind of kick in the head that you might expect in Glasgow, were you in the gutter outside the Brick and Shitter, face down and choking on yours and several others’ enzyme and sex-on-the-beach-softened kebabs. And just to make sure that the brave but hapless berghaus-clad, daring to holiday at the end of the world, can’t flee inland, the Daily Mace your local Polish plumber comes up with a flanking movement, introducing a monstrous sheep-eating ball of fluff spotted on Dartmoor, followed by the somewhat inevitable chorus of speculation from bored or playful (or discredited) ‘boffins’ about breeding communities of rabid panther-bears and sabre-toothed wallabies, one of which may not be too far away from your back garden – in fact madam, one could be polluting your water feature right now, and come to think of it have you checked fluffy in the last hour, and really, just what did eat M******e McC**n……………………………..?!!!
*joke (c) J. Clarkson c.2002. Nice man. Very tall.